Is it true that Ted
Cruz refrained from criticizing Donald Trump after the firestorm over his
comments belittling John McCain’s war record to pick up some of The Donald’s
support should he drop out of the race for president?

In an interview with Bloomberg Politics Cruz said, "My view on John
McCain is explicit and unambiguous. He's an American hero and he's a friend. I'm not going to just take a stick to fellow
Republicans or for that matter to Democrats.
In my time in the Senate I haven't impugned the character of Republicans
or Democrats and I don't intend to start today."

In his March 23, 2015
presidential announcement speech, Cruz cited Ronald Reagan who popularized the
Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow
Republican.

On Friday, however,
the gloves came off. He accused Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying to his colleagues.

Cruz’s broadside of
McConnell came after he set up votes on the controversial issues of the repeal
of Obamacare and the reauthorization of the Export-Import bank. Though
McConnell has personally spoken against the Ex-Im Bank’s reauthorization,
Democrats said in June that he had agreed to schedule a vote on the bank in
order to get highly divisive trade legislation passed.

“I asked the majority
leader very directly: What was the deal that was just cut? The majority leader
was visibly angry with me that I would ask such a question, and the majority
leader looked at me and said, ‘There is no deal, there is no deal, there is no
deal.’ Like Saint Peter, he repeated it three times,” said Cruz.

The bank’s
reauthorization expired on May 31, 2015.
Ex-Im subsidizes innumerable export transactions with guaranteed loans
to make exports cheaper for American products.
In March, two months before the reauthorization expired, the bank’s
$100M cap had been reached.

Critics of the bank
call it “Boeing’s Bank” because of its interventions in financial assistance to
the aircraft manufacturer in selling planes to China, India and other nations
thus allowing U.S. trade policies to be set by market-distorting foreign
governments. The bank is only lightly constrained by the law that supposedly
leashes it.

As Sallie James of
the Cato
Institute notes, government favors flow to the politically connected. Favor-dispensing institutions such as the
Export-Import Bank are dispensing incentives for private interests to develop
lucrative political connections.

Are charges by Cruz
that McConnell is “running the Senate in much the same manner” as Harry Reid
did when he was Majority Leader true?
Hell yes.

“There is a profound
disappointment among the American people because we keep winning elections, and
then we keep getting leaders who don’t do anything they promised,” Cruz said.
“We’ve had a Republican majority in both houses of Congress now for about six
months…This Senate operates exactly the same, the same priorities.”

According to
published reports, McConnell was not on the floor of the Senate during Cruz’s “outburst”. When he learned about it McConnell
barred Cruz from discussions regarding the National Defense Authorization
Act in the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Friday, July 24, 2015

In the prelude to the
60-day congressional review of the Iranian nuclear deal, Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker told Secretary of State “Frenchie”
Kerry on Thursday, “Not unlike a hotel guest that leaves only with a hotel
bathrobe on his back, I believe that you've been fleeced.' He also said that “Iran did a masterful job
of giving you a talking point” on centrifuges used to refine fissile material
for nuclear weapons.

A clearly riled up Sen.
Jim Risch (R-ID) further pummeled the naïve blunderer saying, “With all due
respect, you guys have been bamboozled and the American people are going to
pay.”

Kerry, smug asshole
that he is, insisted that critics of the deal are pushing an unrealistic alternative
that he dismissed as a “sort of unicorn arrangement involving Iran's complete
capitulation.”

“…allowing an
Islamist theocratic tyranny that is the world’s leading state sponsor of terror
with hopes of achieving regional hegemony and pledged to the destruction of
Israel to have a nuclear program is a threat. Giving its nuclear infrastructure
western approval and a path to an eventual bomb is a danger to the entire
region as well as the West. Handing it a massive cash bonus in the form of
relaxed sanctions will enhance its ability to foment terrorism and spread
violence through its auxiliaries and allies.”

“Opponents of the
deal rightly decry this embrace of Iran not just because the inspections are
insufficiently rigorous, the nuclear provisions weak and will eventually expire
giving the Islamist regime a clear path to a bomb. They also oppose it because
despite their occasional attempts to pose as tough-minded in their approach to
Iran, the basic premise of the deal is President Obama’s quest for the regime
to ‘get right with the world.’”

[SKIP]

“Iran won the lenient
terms of the deal by being tough in the negotiations and convincing weak-willed
interlocutors such as Obama and Kerry that they would never be moved by Western
pressure or threats. Critics of the deal view it with disdain because they
correctly perceive its premise to be the hope of an entente with Iran, not a
treaty aimed at limiting its power. Seen from that perspective the details of
the deal are not only unpersuasive, they are beside the point despite the
effort of the Times and
other pro-Obama media cheerleaders to depict the GOP as knee-jerk naysayers.
That is why sensible Republicans and Democrats will reject Kerry’s arrogant
lobbying efforts and vote a deal rooted in appeasement down.”

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Today I did what the
president would not do. I am paying my
respects to the fallen service members slaughtered in Chattanooga last week.

I arose before the
sun came up this morning. I went outside
to water my shrubbery and rose bushes while the temperature was still
tolerable. I came inside to get a bite
of breakfast before going back outside to water my lawn. As I sat down to eat, Fox News was interviewing Mike Shepard, a Marine whose love of
country runs deep. Shepard blogs at Dc
Gazette.

“Most are fully aware
of the president not
showing support for our fallen and flags continue flying high in the
sky. He invited the family of a traitor named Bergdhal to the Rose Garden
to celebrate the release of our enemy. He has yet to call out the terrorist who
shot up two recruiting stations in Chattanooga. Well, we don’t need
permission to show our respect for five lives lost. I am reaching out to you
America in hopes that we teach Obama about respect.”

“I say we should come
together and fly our flags at half-staff until the 30th of July. The 30th will
mark the two week anniversary of this tragedy. Let’s show the president
what it is to respect this country and our fallen. If you drive by a business,
please go in and ask they fly their flag at half-staff. If we get the whole country to do it the
president might get the message. The
message that he is just one man while we are the voice of America. If he won’t
call for flags to be flown at half-staff the American people will. Please share
this and together we can show Washington what it means to respect… May God
forever bless you all, Shep.”

“Come join our FaceBook Half-Staff Challenge page and share your
thoughts and post pictures of your American Flag at half-staff so Obama can see
that We the People want and will honor those brave warriors killed on American
soil!”

After watching the
interview with Mr. Shepard, I was swept up in his plea to lower the flag
outside my home to half-staff. My
neighbors, who were retrieving their morning newspapers, asked why my flag had
been lowered. I explained it was to mourn the loss of five of our service
members in Chattanooga because The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer
had not ordered the flag over the White House to be lowered.

Mine is the only home
in the neighborhood with an in-ground flagpole. My neighbors asked how they
could join in the observance since their house-mounted flags cannot be lowered.
I informed them that flagpoles mounted on their homes should have a black
ribbon or streamer at the top of the American flag. Neighbors who only display the Stars and
Stripes on the Fourth of July brought out their flags. I cannot adequately express my gratitude to
them for uniting in this expression of respect and mourning.

According to Stars
and Stripes, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) proposed legislation to arm
recruiters against attacks similar to Chattanooga. On Monday, his staff criticized the president
for not issuing a proclamation to lower flags.

“They deserve our
respect, and the significance of this event should be matched by the lowering
of the flag,” said Joe Kasper, Hunter’s chief of staff. “It’s a simple gesture
that will reaffirm to the military and millions of Americans that these
servicemen will be rightly honored. This is one that shouldn’t take any second
thought on the part of the White House.”

The president
eventually ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House in the
noon hour, but not before critics and the American public condemned him.
Shameful. Simply shameful.

The headline of this post, "Is San Francisco's Sanctuary Policy a License to Kill?", and the dead tree editorial I took it from, might seem to be a bit hyperbolic, or extreme. Until you consider when it was published: December 5, 2012.

Debra Saunders wrote a piece on the appalling regularity that illegal aliens* are involved in fatal car crashes, highlighting the death of a motorcyclist, Drew Rosenberg, who was hit by an illegal alien, driving without a license, who then proceeded to back over the victim's body.
Saunders notes:

This sanctuary city has been so eager to protect illegal immigrants who cannot obtain California drivers' licenses (written in 2012) that in 2009, then Mayor Gavin Newsom announced that the city would no longer impound the cars of unlicensed drivers automatically.

The law** was written that unlicensed drivers, all of them, without exception, as a deterrent, should forfeit their vehicles as a result of their lawlessness. However, in their magnanimousness, San Francisco decided that while confiscation of cars from pallid people without licenses was perfectly just, some accommodation needed to be made for those among us without the proper documentation, thus, a "Get out of Jail & Keep Your Car" card for those unable to obtain Green cards.

But, hey! In for a penny, in for a pound. SF was already in violation of federal law in shielding illegal aliens, why not violate state law as well, to shield them from the consequences of their actions.

Saunders then went on to detail the various organizations rallying to the defense of illegals - all the usual suspects-, but then, in her naivete, she suggests that illegal aliens who use vehicles to kill somebody should be deported.

I say naivete, because we now know, from the example of Francisco Sanchez, that deportation is not a deterrent, not when we have a revolving door on the border. The most pressing issue we have with illegal immigration is not the status of those who are already here, but slowing and deterring as much as humanly possible, the entry and reentry of undesirable persons of every race and color.

*non citizens who enter the country illegally, for those of you who have trouble grasping the concept of "illegal"

**law: that thing which is supposed to be binding upon everyone without exception when it comes to, say, Obamacare and gay marriage, but is totally optional for discriminating liberal municipalities who, to quote Ms. Saunders once again,

"...care more about people who break the law than the law abiding public."

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

It’s time to head to
the beach. The heat around here has been
like 12 yards of hell so I might as well go where there’s strings of seagulls
in flight, sand, salt water and briny air to make the heat more bearable.

I’ve loaded up the PT
Cruiser and my furkid, Sophie, will ride shotgun.

This visit, one of
many I’ve taken of late, will not be to help my friend who was recovering from
carotid artery surgery but to have sheer fun.
My itinerary will include renting a jet ski and terrorizing the sea
life, shopping at Broadway On The Beach, enjoying a night out at the Carolina
Comedy Club, pigging out on seafood and homemade peach ice cream and ogling the
hunky menfolk with killer tans who smell of coconut oil.

My friend’s son has
planned a pool party replete with burgers and dogs and all the fixin’s. Admittedly a pool is not the same as swimming
in the ocean. What it lacks in
excitement, it more than makes up for by not having scary critters trying to
bite you. Sophie has her own doggie
floatie to join in on the fun!

I’ve already
purchased tickets to see the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, a Chicago Cubs farm team, play the Carolina Mudcats. I’m going to
get in big trouble in the stadium rooting for the Mudcats because they are one
of the minor league farm teams for the Atlanta Braves. Our seats are in the field box smack dab
behind home plate. How sweet is that?

Proof is going to look after the place while I’m
gone. I’ve let the cops know to keep an
eye on him.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Gorham, NH was the
scene of a rootin’, tootin’ circus-like “Buffalo Hill” Wild West Show where
several trick roping events were held including the all-around body looper rope
trick.

Members of the press
were ramroded down the street a “safe”
distance from the Democratic monarch-in-waiting. A group of protesters followed her along the parade
route shouting, "What about Benghazi?" and "Show us your
e-mails!"

Hillary’s drovers tried
soothing the butthurt lapdogs, telling CNN:
“While the GOP might want to spin a good yarn on this, let’s not get tied up in
knots. We wanted to accommodate the press, allow (Clinton) greet voters (sic.)
And allow the press to be right there in the parade with her, as opposed to
preset locations.”

Aaron Short of The New York Postwondered,
“Maybe next time she’ll have them hogtied.”

It’s a cinch these tinhorns
didn’t much appreciate those spurring licks on their thin, delicate hides.

Saturday, July 4, 2015

When you watch the
embedded video below, I hope you will enlarge it to appreciate the imagery
within. The back-story, according to Deseret
News, is that Grammy-nominated violinist Jenny Oaks Baker chose to
collaborate with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a rendition of “Amazing
Grace” following a speech by Rice at a BYU Management Society event in April
2012.

The duo recorded the
track in July 2013 and a year later, Baker flew to San Francisco to record the
video with Rice. Now, two years after the recording process began, the video has
been released just as Americans across the country gather in celebration of the
country and those who have sacrificed so much for freedom.

The song is currently
available as a single through iTunes. According to representatives at Shadow Mountain Records, all proceeds
from the sale of the single will go to the Wounded Warrior
Project.

I must confess I had
a lump in my throat watching the beauty and grace of these two women and the
truly wonderful gift they have given us on this Independence Day.

Friday, July 3, 2015

I’ve been a witness to
history just as you have. America has
been the noblest country the world has ever known and nothing the other side
says will ever persuade me to change my mind.

The greatest
generation liberated Europe in the Second World War, we sent a man to the moon,
we led the Industrial Revolution and ten days after the attacks of 9/11 when
the nation was so terribly sad, my beloved Atlanta Braves played the New York
Mets in Shea Stadium in the first public event after the attacks. The stadium was still being used as a triage
center.

After Marc Anthony
sang “The Star Spangled Banner” the rival teams, standing on the first base and
third base lines, crossed the diamond to hug each and shake hands. Everyone was
rooting for the Mets to win as a symbol of the nation’s resilience.

The city of New York
had been reduced to rubble, but the crowd swelled with national pride. If baseball could carry on, then so could we. Watching President Bush toss that ball gave
me a lump in my throat and every, and I mean every time I hear the national
anthem I get a lump in my throat.

A “Gibraltar in
cleats”, Lou Gehrig, on July 4, 1939 gave his farewell speech to baseball in
Yankee Stadium—a place dedicated to the courage of men. Seventy-six years ago, with tears streaming
down his face, Gehrig humbly told 61,808 fans in the bleachers that he had been
forced to retire due to ALS.

We are the country that authored the
Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and we’ve
had more than our fair share of heroes.

This July Fourth I
will ignore the people in the beltway with abscessed hearts who try desperately
to divide us. I am going to remember
what America means to me. Come Monday, I
will take up the fight again.

On this most American
of holidays, I will dwell in a happy place and enjoy the most American of
things: baseball, apple pie and
Independence Day.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

At least 11 people
have been attacked along the coast of the Carolinas this year, seven in North
Carolina and four in South Carolina. Most of the attacks have occurred since
June 11. The seven attacks in North Carolina are the most recorded in one year
since the Florida Museum of Natural History's International Shark Attack File
began keeping records 80 years ago.

Forty
years ago, Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster hit about a calculating, diabolical,
giant man-eating shark grazing on beachgoers plugged into our primal fear of
monsters. Some
sources claim that humans killed anywhere from 63 million to 100 million
sharks in the last 12 months.

A recent
spate of shark attacks in North Carolina may have been partly caused by global
warming, an expert has claimed. The warmer weather not only brings sharks
further north, but also entices more people to get into the water. Coupled with
other factors such as higher salinity, an increased number of bait fish and
fishing near swimmers has supposedly created a ‘perfect storm’ of conditions
for shark attacks.

But hold on. A marine zoologist with the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has studied sharks for over 50
years poo-pooed his assertion saying there’s too much natural variability in
weather cycles to blame the recent shark attacks on global warming.

There’s no such thing
as a shark attack. We live on the
land. Sharks live in the water. A shark attack is when you’re where you’re
supposed to be and a shark shows up. If
you’re in the shower tonight and you feel a tap on your shoulder, you turn
around and a shark asks, “Wassup?” that’s a shark attack. Getting bitten in the ocean is a shark
accident.

On Wednesday evening in New York City’s Fort Greene Park,
anarchists gathered to burn the American flag near the Prison Ship Martyrs
Monument. The monument is a memorial to
the more than 11,500 American prisoners who died in captivity aboard British
prison ships of disease and malnutrition during the Revolutionary War.

The group, Disarm NYPD, was expecting 300 protesters to
participate in their rally. When
criticism began to mount against them they issued the following statement:

“…many people are rather offended by our decision to burn
the American flag. We find it a sign of the times that people can care so much
about a piece of cloth, while at the same time be so quiet about black
churches being burned all over the country. Perhaps this is the great
difference between us and the so-called ‘patriots’. While they express their
loyalty to symbols, we express our loyalty to the lives of the oppressed.

We do not believe the ideals of America are anything to
be revered. We are building something that will be much better than America…We
dream of what real freedom looks like: freedom
from paramilitaries occupying our communities, beating and killing our sons and
daughters; freedom from our communities being destroyed by the speculative
capital of gentrification; freedom from mass surveillance; and freedom from
systemic racism.

So, we will burn the American flag, a symbol of
oppression and genocide, and in the same action, dismantle our stunted, cynical
expectations of what is possible in the world…We, the dreamers, are the true
realists. We know things can’t continue this way, so we commit to building a
better world. A world better than America.”

When the dozen or so activists
began burning the flag, a group of counter-protesters approached them and they
scattered like scalded dogs. One man,
John Carroll, a resident of Ridgewood, Queens rescued the flag and challenged
the little pricks calling them cowards.
Watching the video
warmed my heart.

JOHN CARROLL Photo credit: Andy Katz/Demotix

Betrayals come
easily.

On Wednesday, June
24, 2015 “Calypso Louie” Farrakhan
told congregants at the Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, DC, “I don’t
know what the hell the fight is about over the Confederate flag! We need to put the American flag down because
we’ve caught as much hell under that as the Confederate flag! Who are we fighting today? It’s the people
that carry the American flag. What flag
do the police have? What flag flies over
the non-Justice Department? What flag
flies over the White House?”

“The left will
destroy the things you care about, because you care about them. It will destroy
them because that gives them power over you. It will destroy them because these
things stand in the way of its power. It will destroy them because a good deal
of its militant activists need things to destroy and if they can't attack you,
they'll turn on the left in a frenzy of ideologically incestuous purges.”

These are the people who find the Confederate Battle Flag offensive.Photo credit: Lee Vanden
Brink

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

The minions can photocopy their ass, but this ass can't work a fax machine. Meh.

A batch of 3,000 of Cankles’
private emails have just been released and it seems she had an excruciating
case of bewilderment regarding how to use her fax machine. In one noteworthy chain of emails there was a
“tense email standoff” with her aide Huma Abedin that is sublimely dim-witted:

“Can you hang up the fax line,” Abedin asked Clinton.

“I thought it was supposed to be off the hook to work?”
Clinton replied.

“Yes, but hang up one more time,” Abedin shot back.

“I did,” Clinton replied.

Others
in the batch reveal more entanglements to Sid Blumenthal, her musings about
her relationship with The World’s Most Dangerous Community Organizer, her
concern over unauthorized photographs taken with a camera with a “long lens
from afar” and her apparent helplessness in fetching herself a cold
drink: (30 September 2009—Pls
call Sarah and ask her if she can make me some iced tea.) Damn, bitch, that’s what I call lazy.

Yesterday The
Daily Mail published a report that Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe,
mocked the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to legalize same-sex marriage vowing to
travel to the White House and “get down on one knee and ask” for The World’s
Most Dangerous Community Organizer’s hand in marriage.

Mugabe is 91and it may help
nurture this budding love affair if he promises to take TWMDCO to an amusement
park and win a giant plush stuffed animal for him. Studies have shown that this act provides
emotional fulfillment and if, at
some point, Mugabe tenderly places his jacket over his shoulders that act would
seal the deal and they would live happily ever after.